# Preface

No prologue goes unread by me. I love a good backstory. I love broad context to give meaning. Every ‘situation’ has a backstory. Every human, every living thing, every ‘thing’ has a story.

Context.

When we are consumed, stuck or spinning, and reacting to life we miss the context - we miss the bigger picture, the broad view. Situations become isolated events that we respond to in often very scripted or routine ways. People become the role they are assigned by the perceiver, or perceivers. People become the role they assign themselves, consciously or unconsciously, as the receiver. The roles have rules as to how we act and respond. We become these robots, these vessels of predictable routine and behavior.

This is not living. This is not alive.

In Part one, I share my early experience working as a school mental health provider. I felt powerless in response to student death by suicide and school violence. I share my aha moment that came at the end of a school year which included two suicide deaths. After receiving the news the second time, I paced my kitchen floor and questioned the silence, ‘what do we do?’ The answer I received was, ‘Life. Sell life.’

The story goes on to tell that I realized I was not alive. I was not living. I had been experiencing a cycle of depression that would come and go every two weeks, and it had gone on for over a decade. I realized that if I could figure out the skills to get my own life back, then I would know the skills to teach others. The skills that worked. The skills that contributed toward life and sustainable growth. Lasting.

In Part two, Keeley tells a story of love, without conditions attached to the love. Great love. Keeley is a dog. My dog. The dog I received. The lessons she taught me are easy to see now that she has been dead for almost seven years. The story of Keeley represents something more. Something bigger. We all certainly must have Keeleys around us all the time, everywhere. ‘Keeley’ exists. Love exists. We just choose to open up to it.

Love transmits. It has to be received. To turn away from love and possibility is suffering.

In Part three, I share some fundamental skills, tools, and strategies that created shifts in my thinking, and transformed my experience of ordinary life. Self-awareness helped me recognize my limiting thoughts. When I changed my thinking, I changed the story. I created my own script. I chose the filter. The new story created new feelings. I felt good. And I knew why. I knew how to create it and sustain it. It felt extraordinary to be so empowered.

I have been out of the depression cycle for over three years. I publish a weekly blog, STuFfeD: self-care 101. The tagline is ‘ordinary day…extraordinary way’. My definition of self-care is to care about yourself enough to notice your thoughts. What story do they tell? Limiting stories lead to limiting outcomes. Expansive thoughts, rooted in possibility, lead to expansive feelings and results. Results that are able to sustain themselves. Results that continue to grow, to expand. Evolve.

The practice of self-awareness, or mindfulness, allows one to disrupt stories that don’t edify and contribute toward life-giving outcomes. Personal Growth content can be reduced to one primary stance: tell your own story.